KARACHI: Karachi is the first South Asian city to host the Women of the World (WOW) Festival. The event that aims to highlight the issues pertaining to gender quality will take place on May 1 at the Beach Luxury Hotel.

This was said by Sumbul Khan, who looks after the arts programmes at the British Council Karachi, while speaking with a group of the city’s bloggers on Wednesday.

Ms Khan said WOW was launched a few years back on International Women’s Day by Jude Kelly of SouthBank Centre London, and ever since it had become a global movement. She said the festival had taken place in different cities of the world and Karachi was the first South Asian city where it would be held in collaboration with the British Council and its six local partners. She said the objective of the event was to mobilise people, especially women, through a series of sessions. She said for the purpose a diverse group of women got together to find out the relevant topics that could be discussed, some of which are: equality at the workplace, sexual violence, breast cancer awareness and child marriage.

Rahma Mian gave a relatively detailed presentation of the festival’s programmes. She said there were eight curators covering as many areas. The first one was WOW Talks, a series of panel discussions focusing on key questions facing young women of Pakistan. The sessions in WOW Talks will be on the following subjects: feminism today; bringing up girls — it takes a village; conflict in the city — Karachi as a woman; and women surviving vulnerability.

Ms Rahma said WOW Bites would entail under eight minutes’ conversations which would begin with poet Attiya Dawood’s verses. Speed Mentoring, she said, would have four sessions, participated by experts from different fields, ranging from artists to doctors and journalists to activists. Then there would be Feminism Under 10 Corner, Performances (having conceptual art, installations, music etc), Workshops, Market (main bazaar, dining area, info booth) and Marketplace. She said individuals such as Tina Sani, Nighat Said Khan and Mukhtar Mai would participate in the festival.

After Mr Rahma’s presentation, WOW’s Domino Pateman addressed the bloggers via Skype. She said the festival was a global movement celebrating everything that girls and women had done. She said with regard to gender equality we should examine the society that we are in and change what needed to be changed. She said the festival had been taking place in different cities of the world and gave the example of a city in Australia where the aborigines were brought together with the white settlers. She said such efforts catalysed people to thinking about what they wanted to change. She said it was also better for men and boys to have gender equality because it’s a human rights issue.

In the context of the Karachi edition of the festival, she called for bringing men and boys along. She said “you are now part of a massive network of people”. She said the situation in some of the cities where the festival had been organised was similar to what’s happening in Karachi.

Ms Pateman’s speech was followed by a couple of members of the British Council asking the bloggers to spread the word through their platforms.

Replying to a question, Ms Rahma said they intended to bring in women from every segment of society into the venue for which they were trying to sort out the transport issue. The bloggers were also told that live performances would comprise music by Sounds of Kolachi, dramatic readings by Zambeel, among other things.

Published in Dawn, April 21st, 2016